Authenticating ownership of a bank account is a crucial step in ensuring the security and integrity of financial transactions. It is a process of verifying that the person claiming to own a bank account is indeed the rightful owner. This can be done through a variety of means, including providing personal identification, answering security questions, or providing a signature.

It happens on a regular basis; prospective clients contact us because they have a SaaS application in development, usually nearing launch, and they need a solution to pay-out to people or companies that serve a role within the application's ecosystem, but who are not the primary beneficiary of the funds received from a credit card payment. 

As of June 30, 2021, a new rule on supplementing data security requirements goes into effect for ACH originators that have an annual volume of 6 million transactions or greater. The rule requires the originators (and third party service providers) to protect bank account information unreadable when it's stored electronically. Basically, the sensitive bank account data needs to be tokenized. 

Any software application having a requirement to accept payments will most likely need to integrate a credit card payment integration solution. Even applications with a subscription model will likely do so, even though ACH processing lends itself very nicely to models with a recurring payment component. The fact of the matter is that credit cards are the go-to payment modal in the card not present space. If you are part of a team on a SaaS payments project, here are some key areas that you should explore.

Having been supplying payment gateway integration solutions for over 20 years now, we certainly hear some common themes when discussing potential integration solutions with prospective clients. As one prospect put it, "I think it's now become part of the developers DNA that Stripe is the defacto integration solution." Who can argue with elegant API's and fairly ease of boarding, right?

Ease of IVR menu flow configuration and editing.

Legacy IVR systems can require developer assets to be used from the IVR payments partner when initially configuring a menu and IVR workflow and subsequent edits should the menu flow require a change. In many cases these can be extremely expensive to the using organization. We have heard instances where a using organization was quoted thousands of dollars to change from using a text to speech engine to using their own recorded voice talent. It should have be be as such.

PCI compliance doesn't apply to ACH Payment Processing, but to utilize a processing platform that is PCI DSS Level 1 certified certainly doesn't hurt security measures around your ACH origination method. NACHA doesn't have an established security certification process like the credit card world does, but they do require that processes, controls and procedures are employed to protect sensitive data like bank account information. ACH Tokenization accomplishes that.

Agile Payments has been supplying various types of payments related tools for 20+ years, and one of those tools is Interactive Voice Response which allows companies to collect payments over the phone using automated IVR Payment technology.

While we are flat in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, our payments related inquiries have changed a bit. More companies are looking for ways to accept payments and donations and either eliminating or reducing the normal methods in which they typically accept payments.

Call center payment processing varies from organization to organization in terms of how it is managed, but the most used methods are from one of the following methods:

Ideally, organizations looking for a Payment Gateway Integration for SaaS start considering their options far in advance of the new application going live. Or in the case of an existing application, far in advance of the need to flip the switch on for the payment processing functionality that the new payment gateway integration will be supporting. 

If you'd like more detail you can view our whitepaper on Payment Gateway Intgeration 

We're continually surprised at the differing perspectives and priorities that various organizations and companies have for integrating to a Payment Gateway Integration. However, there is one constant; each and every integrating organization or their client using base that sells a service or product. To put it simply, they are looking to make a profit from their sales via electronic transactions. Aren't we all (profit)?

Software applications that require payments functionality often can benefit from adding the ACH payment rail. That's especially true for applications that have a subscription or recurring payments component. Thus the application's management or stakeholders will look to various ACH Providers for discussing requirements and finding a solution that meets their needs.

Marketing products or services via mass media to consumers can result in an enormous number of consumer responses, sometimes flooding a call center or even some IVR systems. If the media used is television or radio, the consumer responses arrive at a narrow, but predictable time, further challenging an IVR system's capabilities. Having an IVR system that can handle the call load is just one critical issue that media marketers face in fulfilling their customer orders and accepting consumer payments.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has been around for quite a while now, and it's use for payments acceptance has grown significantly in recent years. With recent advents in IVR systems along with increased cell phone adoption, businesses and organizations now have more tools to bill their customers and collect and accept late payments by phone.

What is an ACH Transfer API, anyway? Quite simply, it's an API that provides the ability for a software application to integrate ACH processing capabilities for the purpose of providing the application to originate, manage and report on the transfer of funds between bank accounts.

If you're part of a SaaS dev team or a stakeholder and have determined that your application has a need for an eCheck API, have you defined your requirements?

ACH API Providers are organizations that provide an API for the purpose of integrating a software application to originate and manage ACH transactions. 

Many software applications have a need to accept payments, and many require the need to integrate payments functionality via an API. For some of these application organizations, integrating to a credit card API isn't enough and have a need to integrate to an ACH Payment API.

Software organizations that serve a customer base having recurring payments can better position themselves by integrating to an ACH Payments API. There are many reasons this is true, but the underlying fact that allows this is that these type organizations have a customer base of a subscription nature and who know their customers well.

If your organization is looking to integrate ACH payment processing, you likely have compiled a list of what your requirements are that are needed from the ACH API Provider. Integrating organizations can differ greatly in their needs, so be sure to have your transaction flows documented.

Many organizations are stuck in the world of managing their Canada EFT transactions by way of file submission. In some cases using antiquated windows software that is limited at best in ongoing maintenance. Fortunately there are Canadian EFT API integrations available.

While the ACH network is still a batch network, utilizing an ACH Payment Gateway API can do wonders for software applications in enhancing their capabilities by communicating with a real-time communication integration. Let's examine some of the modern communication tools available from these ACH gateways.

Recent news has once again exposed the reality that there are inherent risks for a third party ACH processor in handling and processing payroll transactions for a company who handles payroll for multiple companies or even a single company's needs. 

Property management applications are extremely popular today. There is rarely a week that goes by where we are not contacted by a software application that serves property management in some way or another. Often, we are discussing payments solutions with many at one time.